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What do you guys think? An interdisciplinary effort to bring significant battery improvement in a short timeframe sounds like a great idea.

I'm a big fan of this type of government supported R&D. Even if they fail to hit their targets, nothing but good comes out of this type of research, even if it's just identifying techniques that lead to failure.

1,000 mile range, here we come! I've wondered why Panasonic has stuck with the same form factor for Lithium-Ion cells used in cars. Why not something on the order of a C or D size cell? Perhaps the current package offers the best compromise between heat dissipation and energy density.

Or you could also look at differently. 500 mile range with significantly lower battery cost. Could easily design a model that comes in at $20-25k range.

That's what I was thinking. Good move on the doe. The only downside I can see here is some scrappy company coming along, pretending to research, and sucking down dollars -- and in this case, they're controlling it all, so no prob!

1,000 mile range, here we come! I've wondered why Panasonic has stuck with the same form factor for Lithium-Ion cells used in cars. Why not something on the order of a C or D size cell? Perhaps the current package offers the best compromise between heat dissipation and energy density.

A given chemistry can only store a given amount of energy in a given amount of volume/weight. Changing the packaging (putting 1lb of Li-Ion "goo" into 5 cells or 50) doesn't change the capacity. You have to change the chemistry to change the capacity.

My friends with the new energy storage design don't want to take government money because there are simply way too many strings attached, and they're sick of government contract work. Suffice it to say that their design already has 100 times the energy density of your typical battery. So, dammit, this problem is actually solved already.

Just gotta find the right investor (most of them come with too many strings attached, too) and get the prototype built...

I take "Electro", my amazing Model S, to the train station: yes, it's a station wagon

It'll be interesting to see how long it takes to commercialize this technology if it ends up being successful. Anyone know how long it would be between a research breakthrough and when we'd see shipping battery systems based on said breakthrough?

If you do get a 5x improvement in capacity, that also allows you to use a battery with 1/5 the number of cells you currently use. So you can keep the same 300-mile range as the current S85, but do it for $8,000 instead of $40,000. It'd sure be nice to make the Model S $25,000 to $30,000 cheaper, don't you think? The battery pack would also weigh about 200 pounds instead of nearly 1,000 in today's cars, and shaving 800 pounds off the car's curb weight means it'll grip better, perform better, and use even less energy per mile.